by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright July 2006
The theme of this summer's action lackluster, Superman Returns, is "identity crisis", and this crisis happens on many levels -- in the movie and in making and publicizing the movie. The current controllers of the Superman franchise clearly don't know what they have, and this crisis threatens Superman's iconic status.
In the movie Superman has come back to Earth after a six year "walkabout" in which he went searching for his Kryptonian "roots". The search is self-described as fruitless, "There's nothing left out there...." This could also describe the feeling of those creating this movie.
In the movie his relation with Lois Lane is the centerpiece of the movie. And the same question seems to be asked, "Is there anything left?"
Does she still love him, or not? Adding to the identity confusion is a child of Lois'. Early in the movie Clark Kent asks if the child is Superman's and is told by Jimmy Olsen it is definitely not, it's the child of Lois' new "significant other" (SO), Richard White. But... In the middle of the movie the child displays super powers, and at the end of the movie Superman is quoting things to the sleeping child that his father said to him. OK, there is some father confusion. That's a common situation in real life, and the movies, so there's no identity confusion in that plot device.
The problem with this plot evolution in this movie is Lois Lane: in the movie she won't admit she loved Superman (this point is important enough to the director that a whole series of scenes are devoted to it), therefore she can't admit she felt bad being jilted by him... but she does. In many books and movies that kind of denial problem is dismissed as "just being female"... but... the child... this changes the situation so much that it becomes not a denial situation but an impossible one (literally).
In the movie Lois has a child, but there is confusion about who is the father. The fact that there is confusion about the father means that Lois has to have:
She has to make this change of heart from Superman to her new SO fast. She has to make this change with lightning speed, even though Superman leaves without saying he's leaving and without saying good bye. If there is confusion about the child's father, this transition in thinking has to take place in minutes to days -- if she waits a month or two to change her mind about loving Superman, there is no confusion about the child's father. Not only can she not wait, she has to be prescient, she has to know he's leaving not to return at the same moment he does. (in the movie there is a whole scene where she complains that he left without saying he was leaving, or saying good bye, so it's not like she had time to plan for his leaving and think, "Oh well... time to move on." Her SO is no dummy, either. He's a "wheel" at the Daily Planet and well accomplished in his own right. He's the kind of guy who will be picky about his relations.
Yes, Lois is either quite the social superwoman... or seriously confused: does she even know who is the father of her child?
This is an example of the kind of identity crisis that pervades the movie from beginning to end.
A related problem is Lois Lane. In this movie it is key that Superman likes Lois Lane. It is also key that we viewers like Lois Lane, too. And this is a problem. Because of the Superman mythology, I was willing to cut Kate Bosworth some slack and presume that she was likable. But by the end of the movie, she was still not particularly likable. And, by the middle of the movie found myself wondering, "What does Superman see in her?"
Not good... not good....
Here are the problems with liking her:
Superman mythology has Superman raised as Clark Kent on a farm outside of Smallville. When the Superman comic was created in the 1930's, being raised on a farm symbolized an average, but wholesome upbringing. (A similar connotation in the 2000's would be being raised by computer support reps.) The problem with this movie's Kent farm is that it can't pick an era to be part of. The interior farmhouse scenes are out of the 50's (running water), the barnyard scene and pick up truck are out of the 30's (goat, age of truck), and the farm field scenes where Clark is practicing super jumps are out of the 80's (big field water sprinklers).
The scenes around Metropolis are just as conflicted. Lex Luthor has a futuristic boat with a helicopter, but the boat and the house have no security systems -- Lois Lane and her child just walk in. He steals a piece of unique alien technology, then experiments with it in an elaborate model train room. If there was some rhyme or reason to these contrasts, it would be inspired movie making. Without rhyme or reason, it's just wacky. I didn't see any rhyme or reason.
(The first problem in the crashing plane sequence is that planes flying at cruise speed and at 40,000 feet don't hold together when a serious problem happens. Think Lockerby, think Columbia disaster. But this is a lesson that Hollywood is unlikely to learn in this decade. That said...)
In the crashing plane sequence, Lois Lane seatbelts up, then unseatbelts just in time to get seriously bounced around the plane as it crashes. There was no rhyme or reason to her unbuckling, other than the director wanted to show some shots of her bouncing around the plane. The bouncing was severe enough that it should have resulted in broken bones, but Lois comes out of it with slightly mussed hair. This is one of those sequences that screams "Cheap Hollywood Plot Device." In fact, the whole plane crashing sequence screamed "Cheap Hollywood Plot Device", and when I watch such a sequence I just get tired. Ho-hum....
All the action sequences in this Superman movie were pretty ho-hum because they were all so contrived and unbelievable. (They were a lot worse for this than this summer's X-Men movie.)
Conclusion: The director is either seriously sloppy about settings, or seriously confused.
This crisis is taking place behind the scenes as well. The director has been interviewed saying, "We weren't sure where to take the Superman franchise...." and the discussion continues on about things such as putting Superman in battle armor. Wags have blogged about the "de-gaying of Superman", implying that there was a condition that had to be changed. More identity confusion...
In sum, the movie seems to have mirrored real life. The director and the producers didn't know what kind of movie they wanted, and they got something that reflected that root problem.
The fix to this problem is to remember who Superman is. Superman is a "beginning" superhero. He uses super powers to fix problems. That's his "shtick." His shtick is not being clever or being anguished by implications -- those are problems for "advanced" superheroes such as Batman or Spiderman. He originated in a comic book entitled "Action Comics" for a good reason. He is about action.
In those beginning days of yesteryear (the comics of the 1930-50's) Lois Lane was in the story to be a "foil" for Superman, not a romantic interest. She was good looking, but not particularly attractive because she was so vain and ambitious. She was a competitor to Clark Kent as a reporter. (and Clark was a good reporter -- time and again he got the story. He was only "bumbling" in Lois' eyes.) She was ambitious and manipulating and her only interest in Clark was that he could "scoop" her on Superman stories. She wanted to find his secret for doing that.
When this is the kind of Lois that you have, the identity problem solves itself. Superman's "problem" becomes that of defeating bad guys, not dealing with a romance to a woman who is only modestly attractive, and this is a much easier matrix within which to craft action- and special effects-laden stories.
So, the solution to this identity crisis is to take Superman back to his roots. Let him bounce bullets off his chest, let him catch crashing airplanes, don't bog his story down with trying to figure out what a woman is thinking. And, let Lois Lane return to her roots. Let her be ambitious and conniving. Let her take stupid risks because she thinks it will get her closer to a Superman story. Let her scorn Clark Kent so much that she leaks her schemes to him, and he then manipulates her.
Superman doesn't have to be in love with Lois to have an interesting story with her. His story is to defeat evil with action. Her story is to let her ambitions get in his way while he's doing that. It may not be a 2000's story, but it's something young hero wannabe's can understand quite nicely, thank you. It's a beginning superhero story.
-- The End --